Tagged Christianity

In the land of summer’s ever-heat, In the city between the seas, At the place where all the crossroads meet, The ancients dwelt in peace. Age on age they built her high, With walls of polished stone, They reached her towers to the sky, And crowned her with a dome. Of Byzantium the…

Following on from Nathaniel’s review of ‘Silence’ I’ve decided to take a look at the meaning of ‘silence’. Having finally got round to seeing Scorsese’s much-discussed epic of Christian martyrdom in feudal Japan, I found it appropriate, if not necessary to offer some comments on what is undoubtedly a very complex and nuanced tale. For…

Martin Scorsese’s latest epic, Silence (based on the book by Shusaku Endo) centres on the character of Father Sebastião Rodrigues, a Portuguese Jesuit priest who travels to Japan along with his friend Father Francisco Garrpe, to find their former mentor Father Cristóvão Ferreira. Ferreira (played by Liam Neeson) is rumoured to have apostatised; to have…

In the barren white of winter’s snow, With darkness all around, On wild paths where shepherds climb, And donkeys bear King David’s line, The Virgin humbly goes. Wombed in warmth the Redeemer treads, Beneath the star that lights the land, For frozen palm and icy road, Or fallen rock and heavy load, Trouble not…

As we gear up to welcome the festive season into our hearts and homes, it is easy to forget the raison d’etre of Christmas amid the increasingly suffocating commercialism that attaches itself to the holiday. Of course, this holiday celebrates the birth of the Holy Infant in Bethlehem, 2000 years ago in a world much different…

“Atop the bell tower of the modern church the progressive clergyman, instead of a cross, places a weathervane” – Nicolas Gomez-Davila Dear reader, it can be said that many significant legal rulings and legislative efforts which have characterized recent times, whether in Ireland’s referendum result on the legal sanctioning of same-sex relations as being equivalent…